The notion of bringing a human brain back after death once belonged firmly to science fiction. Now, a survey of US physicians has found that doctors assign a 25.5% probability to revival being possible under ideal preservation conditions.

The research is described as the first systematic survey to examine US physicians’ views on preserving dying patients for potential future revival. It follows a 2025 survey in which neuroscientists estimated a “surprising” 40% probability that such an effort could work.

The possibility raises questions about the limits of neuroscience, as well as the potential shape of an entirely new branch of medicine. In that model, care near death would not be intended to improve a patient’s condition, but to make the brain easier to preserve.

The authors argue that the medical and legal communities should begin developing guidelines for patients who request this type of care after death. Shared standards could help determine which preservation procedures are warranted and when they should begin.

Researchers presented physicians with a specific scenario involving a patient in cardiac arrest. The patient’s brain structures remained intact down to the synaptic level, and doctors were asked about the probability that enough information could survive for future revival.

The survey included 334 doctors. Among them were 150 primary care physicians working in general practice, internal medicine, or family medicine, along with 184 doctors from other specialties.

Those additional fields included neurology, psychiatry, intensive care, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, palliative care, and pathology. Across the full group, physicians estimated a 25.5% chance that revival could be possible if preservation occurred under ideal conditions.

The responses also showed that 27.9% of doctors considered preservation either somewhat or very plausible as a way to bring back a brain in the future. The findings suggest that some physicians see the concept as more than a purely fictional possibility.

Preservation requests could create difficult decisions about treatments administered near death. One example discussed in the article involves anticoagulants, which prevent clotting and could be given to support brain preservation rather than to make the patient feel better.

The timing of preservation procedures presents another question. Among surveyed physicians, 44.3% supported allowing such procedures to begin during medically assisted deaths after the patient became unconscious but before cardiac arrest.

According to the study’s authors, animal research has suggested that beginning during this period can improve preservation quality. The survey also found that physicians who were more familiar with proposed preservation practices were often more receptive to them.

"This suggests that a lot of physician hesitancy may come from simple unfamiliarity with the scientific basis of modern preservation methods," said lead author Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston in a release emailed to IFLScience.

"The doctors who have actually thought about this — and who regularly sit with dying patients — tend to be more receptive, not less."

At the center of the scientific idea is the connectome, a term inspired by the word genome. It describes the unique set of connections among a person’s brain cells, a structure in which memories and personality may be encoded.

If researchers could capture the connectome without destroying the brain, they could theoretically search for structural features and attempt to decode memories. Ordinary freezing presents a problem because the crystals that form can tear delicate brain tissue apart.

One proposed alternative is aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, which combines chemical fixatives with vitrification instead of relying on simple freezing. The question is whether such advanced methods could preserve enough information for a brain to be revived in the future, potentially in digital form.

Neuroscientists and physicians have now offered estimates on that possibility, while the authors call for protocols addressing preservation requests as part of end of life care. The study was published in the journal PLOS One.